Interoperable Technologies for Advanced Petascale Simulations (ITAPS)

In the Plasma-Jet driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion (PJMIF) concept, a plasma liner, formed by the merger of a large number of radial, highly supersonic plasma jets, implodes on a magnetized plasma target and compresses it to conditions of the fusion ignition. ITAPS Front tracking technologies have been used for the computational evaluations of the PJMIF concept and have demonstrated the successful formation of the plasma liner by the merger of 625 jets.

Many applications need advanced software tools to manage the complexities associated with sophisticated geometry, mesh, and field manipulation tasks, particularly as computer architectures move toward the petascale. The Center for Interoperable Technologies for Advanced Petascale Simulations (ITAPS) will deliver interoperable and interchangeable mesh, geometry, and field manipulation services that are of direct use to scientific applications. The premise of our technology development goal is that such services can be provided as libraries that can be used with minimal intrusion into application codes. Through SciDAC funding, the ITAPS team is developing and deploying a number of advanced technologies including front tracking, mesh quality improvement via smoothing and swapping, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), and dynamic load balancing that are used by application scientists and provide ample evidence of the viability of this approach.

To allow applications easy use of all ITAPS tools and to create interoperability among those tools, we have defined common interfaces that provide data-structure neutral access to mesh, geometry, and field information. Using these technologies we are working with application scientists to develop the next generation of petascale simulation codes. In particular, we are collaborating with domain scientists interested in accelerator modeling, fusion, nuclear energy, subsurface flow, blood flow, wind energy, to name a few.

If you require additional information or have comments, please contact us now